Mobile Museum of Art gets Helen Keller exhibit

MOBILE, Alabama -- Mobile Museum of Art is the fourth stop on a statewide tour for a new exhibit featuring a statue portraying the dramatic moment that Helen Keller was liberated from the “double dungeon of darkness and silence.”

The exhibit was designed to raise awareness of Helen Keller and the foundations that carry on her work: the Helen Keller Birthplace Foundation (www.helenkellerbirthplace.org); and the Helen Keller Foundation for Research and Education (www.helenkellerfoundation.org). The exhibition will be on view July 27 through Sept. 27.

(Courtesy Mobile Museum of Art)

“This is a wonderful opportunity for the people of Mobile to learn more about Helen Keller and how her oft-stated goal to end preventable blindness and deafness continues to inspire our global efforts in medical research,” says Robert Morris, M.D., president of the Helen Keller Foundation for Research and Education.

Mike McMackin, president of the Helen Keller Birthplace Foundation said he hopes those who visit the statue also will visit Ivy Green in Tuscumbia “to gain a firsthand appreciation of Helen’s remarkable ascent out of darkness and silence.”

Created by sculptor Edward Hlavka, the 1,000-pound bronze statue poised on a base of Sylacauga marble matches one on display in the main hall of the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center in Washington, D.C.

The statue depicts the moment in 1887 when Keller’s teacher Anne Sullivan spelled “W-A-T-E-R” into Helen’s hand while holding her other hand under a water pump; at that moment Keller realized meanings were hidden in the manual alphabet shapes Sullivan had taught her to make.

The life-size image of Keller as a 7-year-old was designed to be approachable and inspiring, especially to children. It is fully accessible from so that all visitors, regardless of their personal limitations, can touch and feel Keller’s likeness.

Keller, who lost her sight and hearing as a child, later learned to speak and earned a degree from Radcliffe College, the women’s branch of Harvard University. She traveled the world as an adult, wrote 12 books and championed causes including women’s suffrage and workers’ rights. She was an internationally celebrated advocate for those with disabilities.

The tour, conducted jointly by the Helen Keller Foundation for Research and Education and the Helen Keller Birthplace Foundation, will travel to one other location, the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, before its final installation at the State Capitol in Montgomery in December.